Dog all that's left of Middletown City Hall menagerie

MIDDLETOWN — For decades, the stuffed dog has stood three-legged inside a glass case in City Hall, posed by a skillful taxidermist to be on the scent of a clutch of quail hiding behind a mossy rock.

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By James Walsh

recordonline.com

By James Walsh

Posted Feb. 17, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By James Walsh

Posted Feb. 17, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

MIDDLETOWN — For decades, the stuffed dog has stood three-legged inside a glass case in City Hall, posed by a skillful taxidermist to be on the scent of a clutch of quail hiding behind a mossy rock.

The enclosure carries a small brass tag, "On the Point," giving a title to the woodland scene positioned on the second-floor landing, halfway between the Department of Public Works and the Common Council chambers.

"When people walk into City Hall and see it, well, it's the number one discussion piece," Mayor Joseph DeStefano said.

"Some people like it; some hate it. It goes back a lot of years, and it'll stay here as long as the family wants it here."

The family is the Gunther clan, as in Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther's in-laws. The white, black-spotted English pointer belonged to Jacob Gunther I, back around the turn of the 20th century.

The passage of time has made the dog's history the stuff of legend, difficult to prove or disprove, but pleasant enough to hear.

"He supposedly had known and hunted once or twice with Theodore Roosevelt," William Gunther said of his great-grandfather. "That's the story I was told."

Although it's also thought the dog was Gunther's favorite canine companion, his name has long been forgotten. City Hall denizens took to making up names, like Rex, some even viewing the dog as a mascot of sorts.

"More than anything, it was done to show the realism of hunting, specifically hunting with a dog," said Gunther, 63, a former Orange County deputy commissioner of public works, Division of Environmental Facilities.

"That's a very special thing, having a hunting dog," he said. "Hardworking, faithful, the whole thing. If you are of a mind to take up bird-hunting and do it with a dog and without a dog, you'll see it's two very different things. The dog makes it very easy."

There was a time when the faithful pointer was just one in a menagerie of preserved critters lining the City Hall staircase.

"I think there was even an elk in one of them," Gunther recalled. "In our barn in Forestburgh, we still have a buffalo head. The story is that the skull is in the Smithsonian, and it's believed to be the biggest buffalo ever taken in North America."

The creatures ran the gamut from fowl to reptile.

"They were all animals taken by my great-grandfather," Gunther said. "For a while, he owned a gin mill, a bar, at 59 North St., and they were all displayed there."

Prohibition put an end to the bar business, leading the family to donate the collection to the city. Only the dog remained by the mid-1970s, after the rest were donated to the Audubon Society, which in turn left the specimens with SUNY Orange's biology department.

A hallway display case in the college's Bio-Tech Building still offers a glimpse of the creatures in a woodland setting, including ducks, owls, a heron, a snapping turtle, an opossum, chipmunks, a fox and various varieties of woodpeckers.

Back at City Hall, Nicole Ramirez, 18, paused in front of the Gunther patriarch's hunting companion while running an errand for her mother.

"It's fascinating that the time was taken to put it in the case and make it look like it's actually hunting," Ramirez said.